


on top of the world with you

by AppleJuiz



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Airplanes, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Light Pining, Missing Scene, Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 20:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19730788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppleJuiz/pseuds/AppleJuiz
Summary: They have seven hours and fifteen minutes until their landing in Newark and his heart is fluttering and his face is burning and he’s already overwhelmed. He has not planned for this.International flights are far from romantic but that doesn’t mean they’re not gonna try.





	on top of the world with you

**Author's Note:**

> Far From Home is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t improve it if I tried but I wanted to write a little something to commemorate this movie that I’ve been waiting for for so long. I’ve been working on a lot of original stuff lately but hopefully I’ll be able to work on any ideas generated by this wonderful movie. This fandom has always been so supportive of my work and I hope you enjoy this one half as much as I enjoyed seeing these two come together on the big screen.

0:38, 33,459 ft

“Hey,” MJ says. She stands in the aisle, her hand propped up against the side of Ned’s seat.

“Hi,” Peter says, straightening up a little too fast, jerking as his lap belt catches him. “Oof.”

“So the guy next to me is reading a David Baldacci book,” she says. There’s a little tear on the sleeve of her jacket. He can’t seem to look at her without immediately remember how she looked on the bridge with that mace.

“Um, yeah,” he says.

“I’m allergic to paperback thrillers with male protagonists,” she says, tilting her head, glancing at Ned.

“Oh,” Peter says, nodding rapidly. He pats Ned’s arm around a dozen times. “Yeah, uh, do you wanna switch with MJ?” 

Ned sighs, glancing between them, MJ cool and sincere, Peter with his eyes wide and urgent.

“Fine,” he says, closing his laptop and climbing out of his seat.

“Thanks, Ned,” Peter says, beaming as he and MJ shuffle around each other in the aisle.

She sits down and Ned heads down to her seat.

“Enjoy your honeymoon phase,” he says in parting. “It’s the memories of the simplicity of this time that will fuel you when tensions rise.” 

MJ shoves her bag under the seat in front of her and buckles the seat belt. Peter watches her and tries not to let his heart beat out of his chest.

“Hey,” he says, smiling at her when she looks up. She grins back, just a little, pressing her lips together and glancing at him sideways.

They have seven hours and fifteen minutes until their landing in Newark and his heart is fluttering and his face is burning and he’s already overwhelmed. He has not planned for this. The plan, even as it went horribly awry in every conceivable way, lead directly up to a kiss on the top of the Eiffel Tower and after that faded to black. He hadn’t even pictured the elevator back down or the rest of the trip or the flight back or what to actually do when they got home. 

“Hey,” she says, facing the screen in front of her but still looking over at him. 

She holds up a little black headphone adapter and his heart skips a beat.

“There’s this, uh, documentary about MK Ultra,” she says, each syllable precise and clipped. “Do you want to-?” 

“Yes.”

  


1:17, 35,027 ft

“Okay I have a question,” MJ says, biting into a pretzel. Peter asked for a packet of cookies instead and didn’t ration them out half as well as she had.

“A question?”

“About the… thing.”

“Right. Okay.” 

“The webs?”

“Yep.” 

“Do you, like… secrete them?” 

“No! No, I make them. Out of chemicals. In a lab. And then put them in my web shooters.” 

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

  


2:21, 37,804 ft

“Oh,” he says, glancing down at his sad looking tote bag, bought from the first convenience store he and Happy found, holding his passport, wallet, and EDITH. 

“Oh,” MJ says, flipping through the list of movies with a scrutinizing stare.

“I forgot to buy one of those neck pillows,” he says with a sigh.

“You’re gonna sleep?”

He shrugs, shifting around to reposition his legs. “Maybe. It’s a long flight. Are you?”

“Nope,” she says. She clicks over to the TV section. “I don’t sleep on airplanes.”

“Really? Like not even on the way here?” 

She shakes her head. 

“I don’t believe in sleeping while sitting,” she says. “And staying up for more than thirty hours let’s me see through the fabric of space and time.”

“You aren’t worried about jet lag?” he asks.

“I want to burn my sleep schedule to the ground, build something new out of the ashes.”

“Okay,” he says.

“But if you want to sleep, I’ll get you another orange juice when the flight attendant comes around,” she offers, in the nonchalantly way she does like she isn’t even thinking about it but secretly really cares.

His stomach swoops like he’s falling just a little. 

“Thanks MJ,” he says, trying and failing to keep his voice from shaking. 

She shrugs, pressing her lips together, and selects a horror on the screen.

  


2:46, 39,000 ft

Mistakes have been made.

In theory, Peter taking a nap was supposed to be good for her because she needs a second to breathe and contemplate and it’s kinda hard to do that when her entire face overheats every time he looks at her. She’s never done this before and while she’s worked through a lot of hypotheticals, it’s very different to what actually sitting next to Peter is like. There’s a nervous tension in the air between them and the memory of his mouth on hers and his hand gripping her arm glows in her brain like the bright LED of a Times Square billboard. 

She’s even crunched the numbers so she knew Peter for all intents and purposes would be a very cute sleeper, do something disgusting like drool that’s somehow endearing and charming. She even laments the loss of the neck pillow because it would have looked so lame in that patented Peter Parker way that her brain reads as attractive.

And instead, for lack of a neck pillow, he made it maybe three minutes, passed out with the line of his throat tipped back, before he swayed, listed to the side and landed on her shoulder.

Her body is in shut down mode, refusing to move even an inch. Her left headphone has been slowly sliding out of her ear for the past ten minutes but she can’t fix it because she can’t move because Peter is sleeping with his head on her shoulder. 

She can’t even look over at him because he probably looks super peaceful and soft and she’ll just combust. Her heart will give out or something. Her face is already burning, her whole shoulder area just lit up like a switchboard.

She inhales slowly and cautiously.

His hand twitches and she thinks, reach out, take his hand, lean your head against his, feel his curls against your cheek, live in this moment forever.

She lets out a breath, holding her chest perfectly still.

It would be easy to just tilt a little, let her head land naturally against his. 

His hair already tickles against her neck, still a little damp from the shower he took between the bridge and racing up to the class at the airport.

She’s already been replaying the moment she crashed into him over and over again, her arms around his neck and his hands on her back. His heartbeat hammering against her chest and his hair tickling her cheek, a little stiff in places, clumped with dirt and blood, but still soft. 

She’s not sure how this works. If that kind of crushing hug is a thing that they do now. Or if that’s just saved for near death experiences.

There’s a part of her that wants to keep reaching for him, that wants to hold his hand and kiss him again and more immediately lean back against him while he sniffles in his sleep.

Yet at the same time the idea of any of that terrifies her abjectly. If she touches him for too long, if she gets too close to him, the feeling of it will just burn right through her and nothing will be left.

She stares resolutely at her screen and doesn’t move a muscle.

4:35, 39,145 ft

Peter wakes up like a train wreck. It’s not the first time and probably won’t be the last. He yelps and jumps, pushing to his feet up so fast his seat belt snaps. He almost stands before his knees buckle and he lands back in his seat, glancing around frantically.

The dream slips from his fingers, but the feeling of dread remains, his dumb tingle screaming in his brain that something is wrong, very wrong, look out. 

“Peter?”

He doubles over, hands shaking as he scrambles for his bag. A hand lands on his upper arm, light and cold. It’s almost reassuring, but his heart is still racing and his brain is still buzzing and he just needs to check, just for a second.

His fingers close around EDITH and he breathes in for the first time.

“Hey.”

He runs his fingers along the floor beneath his feet, the edges of his seat, slowly and steadily, just in case, just tapping along the rough carpeting and praying it remains solid beneath his fingers. He sits up, clutching the sunglasses in one hand and patting along the seat in front of him.

He can’t really breathe but it’s fine, he just needs to check really quick and once he’s sure that this is real, he can work on calming down and figuring out how to calm down and stop the dark edges encroaching in his field of vision and- 

MJ’s hand lands on top of his, closed around his wrist and tugs gently, like a suggestion, until his fingers rest against the inside of her wrist, feeling her steady pulse like a lifeline.

Her face is tactically blank and her chest rises and falls with deep measured breaths.

She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t have to. Her eyes are soft and worried, but speak comfort and calm. Her heartbeat is right there on his fingers and he wants to pull up alongside it, so he drags in breath after breath, closes his eyes.

In the part of his brain that’s not fuzzy and spiraling he wonders if he should just keep his eyes closed for the rest of the flight to avoid having to face what MJ might think of this. He wants so bad for her to think that he’s cool and someone worth spending time with. Being around her makes him feel like less of a mess, like everything else is going to be fine if he can just earn one of her impressed grins.

Seven hours is a long time; it’s enough time for like three to six dates which is starting to feel like something he should have planned more carefully and spread out over a few weeks to he could be some semblance of cool about it.

He didn’t want her to know about the Spider-Man thing. Which was a little unfair, but he wants this thing with her to remain uncomplicated. He wants her to see him as something uncomplicated, something that’s not a challenge, something without baggage.

And instead she’s seeing him screw up and fumble as he tries to fix his mistakes.

“Sorry,” he says once words are a thing that can happen again, once his breaths match hers well enough.

Her foot bumps up against his even as her hands move away.

He blinks his eyes open, focused carefully on his lap instead of the way she’s looking at him.

“Oh,” he says, picking up his seatbelt, running his finger along the frayed edge of the fabric.

“Well, they didn’t say anything about that on the safety card,” MJ offers wryly. When he looks up she’s mildly suppressing a grin.

“Whoops,” he says and she exhales a small laugh, her eyes sparkling.

5:26, 38,997 ft

“That’s cool,” Peter says, fingers tapping against the touch screen. “They have albums and stuff.”

“I don’t listen to music,” she says.

“Oh.” He blinks and tilts his head.

“I’m kidding,” she adds after a moment because he keeps staring at her, looking like he just got punched in the face.

“Right,” he says, nodding urgently. 

There’s so much awkward energy in the air he feels like she’s going to choke on it.

“Sorry,” she says, fisting her hands in the thin wrinkled blanket in her lap. It’s easiest to just apologize. She’s not sure how to explain her intricate systems of defense mechanisms, the unfathomably deep pit inside her that fears being known. Especially not in a way that doesn’t ruin just about everything.

“No,” he says quickly, shifting in his seat. “No, it’s… it’s not bad.”

“Right,” she says. The blanket feels coarse, like thin felt.

“I think you’re really funny,” he says, deeply and sincerely.

Funny is one word for it. She’s heard a lot of the other words for it, in passing over the years, even when she probably wasn’t supposed to.

She thinks of the bridge and of forcing the truth out. I don’t have a lot of luck getting close to people.

Maybe that kind of emotional vulnerability was a fluke. She always thought it would be like a dam breaking; it’s the main reason she’s never been to therapy despite the many signs that she probably should. If she could just hold everything in for the next seventy years, she could die and never have to confront the true depths of her insecurities and unhealthy coping mechanisms or at least never have them see the light of day.

There are a lot of things she could try to explain to Peter, a lot of things that would help him make sense of her. The thought of it makes her want to gag.

He really likes her and thinks she’s funny.

She’s wearing a broken necklace, the weight of it around her neck is reassuring.

“You’re cute when you’re uncomfortable,” she says instead of spilling her soul into the space between them. The dam remains intact.

“Thanks,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.

She brushes her fingers against the necklace, like she had in the airport when he was running late and she thought he’d miss the flight, like she had during takeoff and in the moments after the seatbelt sign blinked off, before heading up the aisle.

“Do you want to listen to music?” She says, carefully measuring out each word, focusing her gaze on a spot on his wrist where it sits on the armrest.

He smiles, a small gentle thing, and nods. “Yeah, uh… sounds great.”

6:03, 38,552 ft

“Oh,” Peter says. He turns in towards her again, keeps doing that, leaning into her space and it makes her pulse thrum. “Um, I’ve heard of this documentary. It’s about this philosopher who tried to communicate with demons during the witch trials in 15th century Italy.”

He says it carefully and precisely, like he’s reading it off. Earnest and eager, the Peter Parker story.

“You interested in the 15th century’s witch trials?” she asks, because she can see a Star Wars movie further down the list, see the way his eyes kinda dart to it.

He nods, his throat bobbing as he swallows.

She wonders if that’s a thing that’s gonna happen for her someday, if somehow they’ll go from awkward pecks and lots of room for Jesus to her kissing that hollow of his throat. Probably, based on statistics and how these romantic relationship things go usually, but it still seems highly improbable for some reason. She can’t envision a logical path between the two disparate acts and in freshman year she wrote out a geometry proof that was two pages long.

“You know you don’t have to impress me, right?” she says, instead of doing or saying something untowards. Peter occasionally strikes her as a squirrel-like creature, there’s a high chance she could scare him off if she makes any sudden movements.

“Uh, I’m- who says I’m trying to-” he stammers, shoulders drawing up defensively.

“I’m already impressed,” she says. “Obviously.”

“Obviously?” he echoes, eyebrows raising. He’s so messy, just feelings and hair all over the place, exploding with outward and he doesn’t even know what that does, how it makes something in her chest shake and the bottom of her stomach drop out.

“I’ve had a crush on you since freshman year,” she says, like if it’s quick and flat it won’t really communicate the extent of what that means, what the past 48 hours really are to her.Peter glances around, bewildered, looks behind him like she’s talking to the middle aged lady who’s been snoozing against the window for the past five hours.

“You- what?” he stammers. 

“You’re one of like three and a half bearable people in our grade,” she says, shrugging. “And Liz moved so…”

He blinks. “Why?” 

“I’m pretty sure because you put her dad in prison,” she says.

“No, I mean… Freshman year? I was a mess in freshman year.”

“So was everyone. It was freshman year.”

“You weren’t.”

“Well, no, of course not,” she says. He runs a hand through his hair. “But I worked very hard to not be a mess in freshman year.”

“And you liked me?”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t like you until like end of sophomore year.”

He blinks. “But you just-”

“I had a crush on you, there’s a difference,” she says. 

“Is there?”

Yes. Having a crush on Peter was feeling tingly and lightheaded every time she spotted him in the halls. It was watching him carefully but never approaching for fear of saying or doing something he would think was dumb. It was all fluff and easy enough to brush. 

Liking Peter is a lot more bearable since she can at least talk to him. It’s a lot more cerebral, paying attention to his facial expressions and the things he says instead of just locking in on his fingers or his eyes or his nose. Not that she stopped noticing things. Liking Peter is cranking everything physical up to eleven, her chest going tight and her fingertips feeling numb, like a heart attack on a hair trigger that responds to every time he looks her way or his hair falls in his eyes just right or he says something smart. 

“Yeah I barely liked you in freshman year,” she says instead. And for some reason it makes him smile. So she taps the Star Wars movie and kicks her legs out in front of her.

6:56, 39,010 ft

“Aw,” he says, as his water sloshes over with a jolt of turbulence. 

“You know I’ve always wanted to die in a plane crash,” MJ says. 

“Really?”

“Well, not just a plane crash, one of those missing plane incidents that hypothetically are crashes,” she explains. The plane jerks again and she crosses her arms over her chest. “There’s a Wikipedia article with a list of flights that have never been found. Though it includes ones with found wreckage which I think is cheating and they counted Captain America’s plane even though we found that one, but even excluding those there’s still like over a hundred of them. I’ve always wanted to be on a Wikipedia article and that seems like a pretty easy and popular one to get on.” 

He smiles, and thinks he’d be satisfied just listening to her talk about anything forever. Every single thing she says is interesting somehow, adds something to what he knows about her and adds to the world.

She inhales sharply as the cabin gets jostled again. He glances down and her hand is white knuckling the arm rest, even as she maintains a cautiously reserved expression.

It’s like a little alarm going off in his head, that MJ is uncomfortable and he should probably do or say something to help. He thinks about taking her hand, letting her dig her fingers into his skin like he can be something stabilizing.

“Um, I was in a plane crash,” he offers.

She squints at him.

“Well, on top of a plane that crashed,” he says, shrugging. “I dunno if that counts.”

“Did they find the plane?”

He nods. “It was kind of hard to miss. It landed right in the middle of Coney Island.”

“Then it doesn’t count.”

“Right.”

“Homecoming,” she says contemplatively. “I flipped you off.”

“Yep,” he says. “Yeah, you did. Was that when you had a crush on me or when you liked me?”

She shrugs and her shoulders relax just a little. “When I liked you, for sure.”

He lets his forearm brush against hers. 

“I don’t really know how the distinctions work,” he says. “But I think I liked you and then had a crush on you.”

She lets go of the arm rest but leaves her arm against his, her skin soft and a little clammy from the air conditioning. He wonders if she’s cold and if that’s a good enough excuse to take her hand or wrap his arm around her shoulders.

“That’s not really how they work,” she says and pats his knee. “But nice try.”

  


7:21, 37,321 ft

He’s running out of time.

He keeps sneaking glances at the flight tracker in the corner, watching as they glide over the northeast and approach Newark. There’s so much he wants to say and do, and yet at the same time he has no idea how to even start, what he should say or do, what the plan is moving forward.

He needs to consult May. Hell, he would even settle for consulting Ned but he’s ten rows back and he doesn’t really want to move.

MJ’s shoe is pressed up along his which is great. Her hands are settled on top of her thighs so reaching for one will be awkward and will most likely go wrong.

He wants to be closer to her but he’s not sure how, literally considering the stiff arm rest and her seat belt, figuratively considering how they haven’t talked about this thing at all and he really wants to but at the same time would rather not because so far whatever they have is great and light and easy.

There’s something nice about the nerves that twist around in his stomach, it all feels so big and important, but exciting and nerve wracking. Like the exhilaration the first few times he swung around the city, like flying with the wind on his face and in his hair and thinking falling might even be worth it for another second in the air.

She tilts her head towards him, lips parted like she’s going to say something clever and wonderful. It’s an opening. He can just lean in and kiss her like it’s nothing, like it’s easy.

“We probably have to do something about your seat belt, right?” she says.

He moves in steadily, his hands shaking as he leans into her space.

You’ve got this, Parker, he thinks, breathing in.

She shifts in her seat and the plane bumps along and he jerks forward, slamming his forehead against her temple.

He winces, falling back against his seat and rubbing at his forehead 

“Ow.” MJ grimaces and then immediately squints at him. “Were you-”

“Nope,” he says, shaking his head. “Nothing. I slipped. 

She does not believe him, tilting her head and raising her chin.

“Okay,” she says, drawing the word out. “Cuz if you were-”

He shakes his head. “I wasn’t.”

“Alright.” She doesn’t believe him. “You might wanna aim a little better next time.”

He buries his face in his hands.

“The plane moved,” he whines.

She hums contemplatively.

“You could always just ask me.” She shrugs. “The answer’s yes. And maybe together we could work around the whole plane moving thing.” 

He allows himself a little peak from between his fingers.

She’s beautiful, big surprise, pushing her bangs out of her eyes.

“I think I’m bad at this,” he says.

“Yeah, you kinda just rammed your face into my face,” she says. “But we’ll work on it.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

She smiles, looking down at her hands and then back up again.

“It’s cute that you think I do,” she decides.

“Yeah?”

“Do you wanna maybe try that again?”

  
7:47, 23,211 ft

“You really just don’t need- Wow.”

He just holds onto the arm rest and plants his feet on the floor and doesn’t move. She feels her stomach jolt as the plane drops a little more, watches him move with it but remain in his seat, just like that.

He smiles, halfway to smug, and holds one of his hands up, wiggling his fingers teasingly.

“I’m sticky,” he says with a halfhearted shrug.

“Right,” she says, raising her eyebrows. She tries to picture him holding onto the outside of a plane, just his hands and toes pressed up against the metal with nothing else to secure him. It’s too weird. She shakes her head.

She may have known, technically suspected, that this is a part of who he is but it’s still going to take a little getting used to.

She likes a challenge.

  


7:58, 0 ft

His mind is spinning with plans. Movie dates, maybe even at his apartment. He wonders if MJ would want to go out for dinner and if they’d dress up for it, or just grab some pizza. He thinks he’d be content just walking around in the city, maybe a few loops around Central Park. 

It’s summer. Months of free time lie at their feet and there’s so many things to do or see and he wants to do them all with her.

He just has to ask, preferably before they get off this plane and head home because he has a feeling he’ll have more luck now than over text, cuz if he’s just staring at a screen he’ll probably over think it and wimp out.

She’s already standing, leaning her hands against the overhead compartment and glancing down the crowded aisle.

“Hey,” he says, wobbling to his feet before realizing that means he has to hunch over a little, his head squished against the ceiling.

“Hey,” she says, drumming her fingers along the plastic paneling.

“Um,” he says.

“I downloaded some true crime podcasts,” she says, patting her phone. She smiles, eyes soft and focused on him like she knows what he’s been thinking and she can feel the pull of summer and wants just as much as he does. “If you want to listen to them while we wait in customs?”

“Sure.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> Post credit scene who?
> 
> Thanks again for reading. I hope you liked it and I hope you tell me what you think in the comments. I’m gonna go watch FFH another ten times now.


End file.
